The Tocco family just got a brand new addition after Samsung confirmed the S5230 will be launched as the Samsung Tocco Lite here in the UK. The latest member of the Tocco range again serves up touchscreen technology but with the Lite moniker, have Samsung stripped out the goodies?

The answer is a satisfying and resounding no! The S5230 Tocco Lite features a crystal clear 3.0 inch touchscreen display supporting Handwriting recognition, a built in Accelerometer and something called Gesture Lock which allows you to lock the handset with a customisable gesture on the touchscreen. The phone itself runs on the popular Samsung TouchWIZ user interface which gives you an interactive menu bar from which you can drag and drop shortcuts (or Widgets as Samsung like to call them) on to the home screen. This plays out like a simpler and more user friendly Symbian homescreen that’s definitely alot easier on the eye.

The Tocco Lite features 3.15 Megapixel camera which is more than capable of handling any situation thrown at it. Samsung have also included Smile detection (the camera will focus but then only capture the image once your subject is smiling) which is a nice addition to an already competent camera. Video capture is also on the cards at a sturdy 15 frames per second in QVGA resolution.

As for music and video playback, the Tocco Lite will support MP3, AAC and MPEG4, among others, and the addition of a micro SD memory card slot means the fun doesn’t have to end at the 50MB internal memory. A built in FM Radio and Bluetooth v2.1 (allowing music to be streamed wirelessly to a compatible headset) further boost the Tocco Lite’s credentials as a portable multi media player.

It seems the only place the Tocco Lite earns its ‘Lite’ tag is in the connectivity department as Samsung have dispensed with 3G connectivity in favour of standard GPRS support. We can hardly complain as Samsung had to cut some features otherwise the Tocco Lite would’ve just turned out too similar to the original.